Dear, poor Mr. Horowitz:
The Saudi government has been beheading people for years while the US government supports it. If you think beheadings in the Middle East are a new phenomenon, then you are a sadly out of touch individual and someone ought to take away the crayons you use to scrawl your twisted messages.
âISIL is not Islamic- and many Moderate and even Conservative Muslims have said so flat out. ISIL is a perversion of Islam.â
The problem here is that none of the people you are referencing are in a position to say what is or isnât ârealâ Islam. No one is, actually. Thatâs one of the biggest problems with religion â there is no means of objectively telling whoâs right and wrong between sects.
The oppressive, murderous brand of Islam practiced by ISIS is no more or less âcorrectâ than the more secular forms practiced by American Muslims â or at least not demonstrably so.
The people I am referring to are scholars of the Quran and Islam. They wrote a letter not long ago condemning ISIL as non-Islamic. They are as close to an authority on what is and is not Islamic as one can get in the world, but you are correct that short of a particular deity coming down and explaining what they meant in person, various religions are subject to interpretation.
It should be noted, however, that among Muslims, those scholars have far more weight behind them than the leader of ISIL does as he is merely a very poor student of History and they are all clerics and scholars of the religion.
And yes, I just called a man with a PhD in History a very poor student of History.
The fact is, ISIS gave this pig exactly what he wanted: nearly three fourths of Americans favor killing more Muslims, as the military acting in our name backs away from the already-pale standards for avoiding collateral damage.
And Horowitz is still allowed out in public why?
Will someone please let Bill Maher know? Heâs still peddling the bullshit that Muslims donât apologize for their wackos.
Yeah lets lump all Muslims as the same. Just like all Christians believe the same doctrines. If Mr Horowitz was to be believed thereâs no difference between Sufi, Alawite, Sunni, Wahabbi, or Shia. All of 'em lop heads off willy nilly, right? No matter that ISIS is a Sunni outfit bent on wiping out any other version of Islam. ISIS kills many more Muslims than any other religion.
Again, no objective means of determining whoâs right or wrong, so no invocation of the words of a theologian gets you anywhere toward determining that ISISâs theology is actually invalid. Iâm not talking about absolute proof one way or another. I mean you have nothing objective at all to point to.
Why do you think it is that every disagreement within a religion results in either 1) subjugation of the dissenters, or 2) a schism into separate sects? Why do you think that there are dozens of sects of Islam now when Muhammad founded a singular one? Why do you think there are thousands of Christian denominations?
Religion is, by its very nature, a divergent social phenomenon. The longer a religion persists, the more it divides itself (barring horrific events like the Holocaust). So, a question of whoâs right or wrong among religious sects is a Sisyphean task. Youâll never find the solution, because there is no solution to be found.
I believe that you are deliberately parsing things in such a manner as to fit your view of the world despite being slightly mistaken about my meaning.
There is an objective measure of whether or not someone is learned regarding a religion or various religions, and that is to see if they have the scholarly chops to argue the subject matter academically. Does this mean that any given religion is right or wrong, no. As I said, unless the deity in question comes down and tells humanity what it said, we can only go on the words of various tomes considered sacred to the religion.
I am quite aware of the sociological nature of religion, but that does not mean that someone within said religion cannot be considered to be an expert in the tenants of that particular religion if they have studied it for long enough. From the perspective of many Muslims, those scholars of Islam who denounced ISIL are the authority when it comes to who can be considered Muslim or what can be considered Islamic just as the Pope and his College of Cardinals are considered to be the authority on what is considered to be Catholic.
What you are arguing is the meaninglessness of religion, which is certainly your right and your view; however, it is not what I argued nor what I was discussing. Sociologically speaking, I am talking about people who have been given a certain amount of authority within their religion due to their scholarly work within their faith.
Gee. Think of Christians in the days of the CrusadesâŠ
The provocatively titled post has not been well-received on Twitter.
Tom -
Not sure what Twitter string you were reading, but the one you linked to was definitely giving Horowitz a lot of love. Yeah, Eric Boehlert wrote something against Horowitzâs ravings, but there werenât many like Boehlert.
Disclaimer: I only read the first 100-or-so comments, so who knows if there was a sudden anti-Horowitz surge. But Iâm betting not.
Dude, Saudi Arabia has been doing the same stuff for 100 years. Where youâve been?
When Sultan áčąalÄáž„ ad-DÄ«n YĆ«suf ibn AyyĆ«b, better known as Saladin, captured Jerusalem, he held the captured citizens for ransom. When the ransom was not paid by the Crusaders, he paid their ransom himself.
When the Crusaders captured Jerusalem, they just slaughtered everyone including the Christians.
And this was before the InquisitionâŠ
Oh, fun fact, the reason why Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain funded Columbusâ journey to Asia was because they wanted a way to attack the Muslims from the East- they wanted to continue the Reconquista against the Muslims.
Whore-o-witz is a tool. He just sells out to whatever the Republican corporate meme of the moment night be. Iâve dealt with a couple of his followers, and the connection to Christofascism is evident.
Well, of course. If you start reporting on the Muslims that condemn the extremists then you canât go around saying that the moderate Muslims should say something. Geez.